2

Boy, do these guys at StackOverflow really make you think before even trying to ask a question here - having a real stage fright writing this first question.

I will provide some resources I found during my search, but let me first elaborate on the topic itself. Namely, I am interested in the research of the Floating Point Unit, therefore, I would like to see any available open source hardware implementation - preferably in Chisel, but Verilog/VHDL will also do just fine.

So, kindly, provide any reference, a link or a document, on this matter.

What I've come across, taking a peak into two open source digital design projects that include the FPU - Rocket Chip and LowRISC is that they pull on the same repository originated from Berkeley - hardfloat. These are all developed based on the RISCV ISA, but this question is not limited to that particular ISA.

A very interesting resource, to put a nice, theoretical framework around all of the coding is this PhD thesis.

Has anyone delved into the the adventure of designing or upgrading some other FPU?

Can you point out any other free open source hardware FPU implementation?

Any comment, proposal, idea are more than welcome.

Thank you all,

Aleksandar

apaj
  • 191
  • 11
  • This looks like it might be more suited to electronics.stackexchange.com? – roelofs Nov 21 '17 at 00:03
  • Hi roelofs, thanks for the comment - I have to admit I am not really sure, but as I've seen bunch of other questions posted on the topic of FPU and HDLs in general here, and all the FPU implementations are based on HDL code, be it Chisel, Verilog or VHDL, I thought that this might be the right place. Of course, I will take the advice of the more experienced to move the question if necessary. – apaj Nov 21 '17 at 00:32
  • I can't say for certain whether it's the wrong place, but looking at your queries, I don't think it will be out of place on electronics. Nothing stops you from posting it in both places. Having said that - there is a guideline against opinion based questions, or things that can't be easily and objectively answered. Asking for a reading list may be an issue - perhaps look at posting this on a site like hackernews as well? I doubt that you would get one definitive answer (if any) here. – roelofs Nov 21 '17 at 00:40
  • I'm saying all of this, because you clearly put a lot of thought into your question - thanks for that! Hopefully you get some answers. – roelofs Nov 21 '17 at 00:41
  • Thanks @roelofs for the heads up - I will explore both sites you suggested. For now, I'll leave the question here also, just kindly noting that my intention was not to ask opinion based question. What I am trying to do with this post is to call out anybody familiar with any kind of FPU open source implementation - excluding the ones I mentioned. – apaj Nov 21 '17 at 21:00

1 Answers1

0

Here is an interesting resource - actually, a collection of resources with lots of interesting comments (stressing especially the advantages of decimal FPUs) and an actual implementation in ANSI C, which is a reference implementation, based on the specifications given.

apaj
  • 191
  • 11